The exhibition "When We See Us", currently on view at the Kunstmuseum Basel, presents a panoramic survey of a century of Black figurative painting. Because, of course, Black artists have been painting themselves and their environment throughout the 20th and 21st century, just like other artists. It’s just that these works are underrepresented in Western museums. The exhibition was originally organized and produced by the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town. The title is a reference to the 2019 Netflix miniseries When They See Us, a true crime drama exploring racial antagonisms in the U.S. As Koyo Kouoh, the exhibition’s co-curator and director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, explains “By substituting ‘they’ with ‘we’, the exhibition places Black self-representation front and centre.”
The exhibition occupies all floors of the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart. It features more than 150 paintings by 120 artists from Africa and the Black diaspora. The exhibition is loosely organized around six themes: Triumph and Emancipation, Sensuality, Spirituality, The Everyday, Joy and Revelry and Repose. The curators commissioned the composer and installation artist Neo Muyanga to create a soundtrack for each of the show’s six sections, which adds to the lively atmosphere. A timeline with key political and cultural events of the past century puts the works on display into a historical context. One such moment was the election of Barack Obama as the first Black President of the United States, an event which reverberated around the world and which is celebrated by the Congolese artist Chéri Chérin in “Obama Revolution” (2009).
There is much to see and enjoy and I wish I had had more time to visit the show. Perhaps I should visit a second time. The exhibition includes some established names, such as Wilfredo Lam, but most featured artists were new to me. Jean-Michel Basquiat is a notable omission in an exhibition about Black figuration. Then again his work is already ubiquitous.
"O Curandeiro (The Sangoma or the Healer)" (1964) by Malangatana Ngwenya (left) and “Buffalo Bill Bar” (1980) by Eric Ndlovu (right)
I loved “O Curandeiro (The Sangoma or the Healer)” (1964) by Malangatana Ngwenya from Mozambique and “Buffalo Bill Bar” (1980) by Eric Ndlovu from South Africa, both of which are dense, colorful paintings, which I much prefer to the minimalism of Dan Flavin, who is currently honored with a retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Another highlight is “Constant III” (2019) by Sungi Mlengeya from Tanzania, who uses a pared down palette of blacks and browns against a white background to create striking portraits and double-portraits.
As always it helps if you have a little bit of cultural baggage. Roméo Mivekannin, who hails from Ivory Coast, has inserted himself into “Le modéle noir, d’après Félix Vallotton” (2019), which is a reference to “La Blanche et la Noire” (The Black and the White) (1913) by Félix Vallotton, which itself is a reference to “Olympia” (1863) by Édouard Manet. “The Birthday Party” (2021) by Esiri Erheriene-Essi, which also adorns the posters for the exhibition, shows a laughing Steve Biko holding a birthday cake surrounded by an animated crowd. The painting has a dark political undertone, because Steve Biko (1946-1977) was a South African anti-apartheid activist who was tortured and killed by South African police. I’m sure there are plenty of other references that I missed. I would therefore have preferred a bit more context for each painting, or perhaps I should have taken the audio guide, which, I later read, provides background stories about the artworks. But that’s a minor quibble for an otherwise superb show.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Thames & Hudson.
When We See Us. A Century of Black Figuration in Painting is at the Kunstmuseum Basel until 27 October 2024. It will then travel on to Brussels where it will be on view at Bozar in Spring 2025.
